While an idea that has come to my mind is not original in the blogosphere, it is original to my blog as I have never invited guest bloggers to participate here with their thoughts. While comments and discussion are more than welcome always, I just never organized guest blog posts before.

Now that’s changing.

Those of you involved with voice over may have opinions on our industry that you’d like to flesh out a bit further. But you may not want to blog regularly or even have your own blog…so use my soapbox for a moment. I may act like I never get off it but I am truly interested in your opinions.

Here is what I am proposing and inviting any of you to participate in on voxmarketising.com’s latest experiment

• I will present a topic for anyone to submit their blog post on within a set time frame (likely a week).
• Depending on the response (hopefully not crickets) I’ll post them with your by-line etc. NOTE: If I think your post has no merit or is poorly written…I won’t post it. Know that now and don’t be mad/sad with me later. My house, my rules (just practicing that line for when my kids get bigger)
• Please keep your length to about 500 words or less if possible.
• Please include a one to two line infomercial about you, your company name, web site and something interesting about yourself so that I can include that as an “author’s information” tag at the end of the post.
• Be polite etc., if you’re rude or slanderous (or even rude and slanderous etc.) I won’t publish you. (again, my house, my rules)
• Make sure you properly credit any sources, especially if you include any audio or video clips (obviously include their embedded code etc)
• As it’s my blog I reserve the right to append your post for grammar, length or any other reason as I see fit. No I don’t intend to screw with your intent and if you don’t like my changes you may ask me to take down your post and I will. (MYMR)

Now here’s a cool twist (or what I think is a cool twist). Again based on responses, what I hope to do is take a few of the authors on the topic, Skype them and do a round table recording where they can chat (debate?) the topic with points from their posts. The give and take would make a cool VMT interview for my podcast….with added exposure for the participants.

>>> My first topic?

If you were advising someone at any point in their VO career how to produce a terrific commercial voice over demo – what would you tell them are the top 5 elements that they need to include in that demo and why?

This idea may be a resounding success or a dismal failure but I believe you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

Email your posts to me at peter at audioconnell dot com and let’s enjoy the ride together! Thanks.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, internet, podcast, podcasting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

John Postel, Peter O'Connell & Donna Postel

What a great treat it was to meet St. Louis based voice talent Donna Postel and her husband John tonight for dinner at the famous Blueberry Hill restaurant.

What a fabulous career in radio she had and now she enjoys a terrific voice over career.

And the best news of all is she’ll have her new web site up by April 15th of this year. Look for it!

Tags: announcers, audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, internet, radio, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

I was pinged this morning (and I think we all know painful that can be – ba-dum-bump) by David Ciccarelli who, with his wife Stephanie, own Voices.com. David asked if I would review, post and comment on his annual “Report on The Voice Over Industry 2009”.

OK then, a review with some general perspective and information upfront.

• While I am not a fan of the pay-for-play voice over model upon which Voices.com, Voice 123 and others have built their business, I have stated that if I were to choose one service of that ilk it would be Voices.com because even before I knew the Ciccarellis personally, the customer service and responsiveness their Voices.com offered me when I was an early member was better than any competitor.
• This is at least the second if not third year David has done this report and I give him great credit for seeing an opening for information sharing and promotion of his own business and going for it.
• I also give him credit for daring to ask the opinion of a loud mouth putz like me ’cause he knows I pull no punches on industry issues or in reviews. He and I must ascribe to the same theory that some publicity is better than none at all.
• Over the years I have become friends with David and Stephanie and know them to be honest people whose opinions and talents I respect. Others in their business, not so much.

So enough preamble, on to the meat-

The 23 page report is more PowerPoint than e-book with each slide offering one or two nuggets of information ranging from various market overviews to drilldowns on pertinent business segments.

My likes:

• I like that David’s established an annual tome that summarizes the industry. It adds credibility to the business but to be taken seriously it needs some additional info (see dislikes).
• I have seen “state of the industry reports” or prognostications from Voices.com’s competitors and comparably this is the most credible and informative of all of them at this moment in time.
• Information like $4.05 for the ad word voice over on Google is good to know (a stupidly high price to pay when its competitors who do most of the clicking on such ads but let’s not kill the messenger here)
• I like the format for both conveying information and for its readability.

My dislikes:

• The content has only a few bits of information that I think are new or enlightening to the industry. To become a must read it has to reveal trends and statistics that offer more insight for voice talents and producers. That requires a great deal more research which this document does not have and it shows rather clearly.
• Some topics struck me as grossly self-serving: a report on Social Networks conveniently notes the growth of a Voice.com sponsored group on Facebook and the Time Spent Online chart had Voices.com’s site crushing Voice 123’s statistically and visually while also noting most industry players spend most of their time on Voices.com. This smacks a bit more like a sales presentation than a industry report.
• The salary statistics chart – probably the most important page for both talent and producers – had no quoted sources for the stated figures (which were much too broad) and was only one page (versus three pages on podcasting). This was a big miss.
• The Touch Graph tool wasn’t simplistic enough or easy enough to immediately digest key information (like a good graph should). As just one (possibly self-serving in keeping here with a developing theme) example this graph had the audio’connell web site listed on the web site graph on “voiceovers” and on the same graph an Oxford biography link to Peter O’Connell who I think is a professor or a Bishop but sure ain’t me (no, I do not believe there are any other Peter O’Connell voice overs but me). The graph was gimmicky and not informative.

In summary, I believe that this report reads more like a sophomore’s term paper rather than a senior thesis. What it can, should and I truly hope will be in the future is a report that has a lot more facts in it, much more pertinent data and more information to help talent and producers manage their businesses. It will take much more time and research from Voices.com to make this annual report a widely respected annual state of the industry. Today, the report is not yet there but there is a foundation of a good idea.

We need that “stuff” as well as the promise of what this report could someday be.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, facebook, google, internet, social media, voice 123, voice over podcast, voice talent, voiceover, voices.com by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
6 Comments »

Facebook has been on my mind this weekend as certain audio’connell siblings have dipped their toe into the water, took a look around the platform, drank a bit of the Facebook kool-aid – whatever.

So in my early morning reading, I came across this fine and evolving tutorial on using Facebook from my friends at Social Media Universe – Global. Now, they don’t know they are my friends but as a subscriber, I feel I get to call them names and that’s the one I chose.

Anyway, if you want to learn about Facebook and its many uses under the radar, so that you can appear to be an instant expert to friends who won’t know your educational secret (as it that one of the more fun aspects of the web) this page may be of interest to you. No doubt there are other pages on the web like this but these guys get the attention here today.

And if you’d like to friend me up, here’s the place to start.

(Ed. Note – No, there will be no “go out and vote” posting today. After this ridiculous long and expensive 2 year election cycle (and yes, I made money off it) if you’re so out of it that you need a reminder from ME to get out and cast your vote, then you are probably too “out of it” to be trusted with such an important task anyway.)

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, facebook, social media, social networking by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

Today started of kind of depressing. Cold and rain have come to stay and we even had a dusting of snow that ultimately melted…all combining into my least favorite weather.

Add to that the sync between my phone and my computer is on the fritz, so I wasn’t expecting to much from this particular Wednesday.

But I am about to prove that what you think you know about a day ain’t necessarily the whole story.

Late today I was on Google and I checked the listings for voice over talent, a primary listing in my field. And I did a double take.

Right there, under the paid ad as the first organic listing was audio’connell Voice Over Talent’s web listing.

Number 1. Click the picture to see the page.

It’s a nice feeling. And I enjoyed it for the moment. Heck, I am enjoying it now. I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging. I know better.

Search engine listings, even on the mother ship, can be fickle things and positions change constantly. Yet it was nice to see a ray of sunshine on my screen today as the weather turned gray.

Thanks to all of you who visit. Thanks even more so to those of you who visit and hire. Everyone on the site appreciates you attention and your business.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, google, internet, marketing, search engine marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
9 Comments »

Another great night in Rochester, NY for 6th Annual RAF Freelance Creative Expo, held at the Memorial Art Gallery Ballroom.

While only about 90 minutes away from me I don’t spend enough time with clients in the area so this is a nice time to catch up with some old friends and make new ones. In fact my thanks to Ken from Studio 2B for shooting the pic of me at the booth.

Lots of great leads to follow up on. My thanks to everyone who visited my table at the expo.

Tags: advertising, audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »